Aljazeera news hour thats coming up in less than half an hour coming up next though its inside story. Running out of water theyre calling it day zero cities like cape town and nairobi is soon to get dry and first two years of drought and bad planning so why havent governments done more to prevent this catastrophe is the golden age of water now over this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program im peter davi Climate Change human action and a growing population are increasing the chances of a global water crisis thats what experts have long been warning about over a billion people lack access to clean Drinking Water and the un predicts a global forty percent water deficit by the year twenty thirty south africas cape town for example could become the worlds first major city to run out of water literally much of the city and the rest of the countrys water flows from neighboring lawsuit to and the next water crisis could be looming then south africa has been plagued by a prolonged drought for three years cape town is the hardest hit its dams are at less than twenty five percent full the city is warning it could reach what its calling day zero thats when the dams drop below safe levels and the taps have to be shut off the government has declared the situation a National Disaster and has limited residents to using fifty liters of water per person per day well kenya is also dealing with its own water crisis after a prolonged dry spell there it hasnt rained in many parts of this east african country since october of last year and spurts attribute that to Climate Change thats not only affected Water Supplies but also Food Production now several areas including the capital nairobi a facing an acute water shortage many people havent even had running. Water through their taps for months and theyve had to resort to buying from vendors at high prices now before we go to our guests aljazeera as meteorologists Richard Angwin explains now how weather and Climate Change both play a key role in this crisis well geographically of course nairobi in kenya and cape town in south africa are miles and miles apart the same goes for the climatic zones but they have a couple things in common growing populations and a growing to man for water exacerbated by changing weather patterns if we take a ten first of all theres no doubt that the city has been experiencing a really severe drought over the last three to four years in fact if you have a look at this the graph the dry she is on record going back nearly a century twenty seventeen twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen sassoon is lack of water which is partly responsible for the citys problems in kenya as far as nairobi is concerned i cant find much to indicate changes in precipitation patterns but what there is evidence for is that a warming world is resulting in generally higher temperatures which means more evaporation which in turn means a greater demand for water supply crops and i think for both cities the problems id like to continue in a warming world. Ok lets bring in our guests today joining us from cape town on Skype Neal ArmitageDeputy Director of future water a Research Institute devoted to water at the university of cape town in london David Ticknor chief freshwater advisor of the World Wide Fund for nature and in nairobi also in scope alex that we director of East Africa Institute of the Icon University welcome to you all Neil Armstrong cape town how bad is this going to get. Well how bad is going to get thats the big question what weve had is three years of well. Every drain fall including the two trials years on record so cumulatively it amounts to Something Like a one out of five hundred or one hundred thousand years drought something completely beyond what anyone had anticipated we are now about two months away from the expected beginning of the rainy season and at this stage we have cause have no idea how good the rainy season will be one might have a good one in what about or do you think there in london im assuming here this will have a major impact on agriculture and industry give us a sense of how but that might be. Well neal is probably a better place to talk about the details of the South African situation at the generally one of the first sectors to suffer in drought is often the Agricultural Sector and that can have a major impact on creates a curacy that can have an International Repercussions about a decade or so there was a period of dry rankles i think associated with an el nino event a big periodic climatic shift and that disrupted global Food Supplies and we ended up seeing prospects in all sorts of internationally traded commodities so these things can have International Ramifications alex that we see in nairobi is that picture reflected where you are. Well at the moment in the narrow view what we have is the normal cycles of. Dry spell when hes so when were in the face of light now its with the middle of the on the dry spell but i think the want to Exhibit Exhibit by four legs management especially deforestation of the up the regions that supply most of the major leaguers that supply it was supposed to be so we have for an all time low base flow which is very critical especially at this time of year is then we suppose a lot of that i think on the buckle that is also let people who should go through specially that will be the subject that require over one million cubic meters of one of them against the supply the best city of about six hundred thousand cubic meters a day but hes also made what was the complicated by very inefficient distribution and what were going to finish and thats whats. Great kind of supply since then. Im saying we dont know what it is the and how some level and this is going to study up front that what is it its can discuss resource and its do you think going to major one of those Missions Missions within itself youre going to produce a lot of some of the one of the four of the noncon something Neal Armitage lets explore that idea of water restrictions for a second they seem pretty draconian around parts of cape town i mean tourists are being told to live like a local in the locals are not living well when it comes to using water have the water restrictions worked or not exceptionally well and just to back up a little bit its not something that is competing you came john has been working on whats called whats to modern management and to increase improving which efficiency those are common time just a moment ago for quite some time since about one thousand nine hundred ninety. And so it has resulted in a massive drop in on. Counts for water down to about fifteen percent which is will cause even before the drought now with the drought of course the fact institute is to come in measures and it can quite simply be said that is the only thing that saved us and saving us of course we dont know whether were going to be safe better its looking reasonable for this year at any rate so its it is about managing to persuade residents in the first instance but in creasing lead was rolled out to businesses to be ultra careful about the way they use water and a lot of middle class capetonians have learned that they can actually live on relatively small quantity of water most of most of us i think of know going into the spirit of things i think my last month was thirty nine liters a day for each of my six members of the household and sort of kind of become a bit of a Competition Among some capetonians not necessary or of course in the garden not real says that of course a quarter of the population are living in informal settlements where to live of twenty to twenty five these big day is actually the norm and it was as being so i guess its a case of middle class capetonians are learning what its like to be poor david signal is clearly a difference here between i mean Contingency Planning and Crisis Management have governments either at a National Level or a local level got this totally wrong up to now because it seems to me that they havent actually reacted very quickly to the warnings that guys like you have been putting out there for a long time. Yeah thats exactly right its a very good question a w a b f quite recently weve been working with the Chinese Government to review global practice Global Policy on drought Risk Management the chinese are exposed to quite a lot of drought risk themselves and they want to have a management better in doing so they want to learn the lessons from from around the world one of the things we found from that quite comprehensive Global Review is that almost everywhere governments dont prepare particularly good contingency plans for drought even though we know drought can hit pretty much anywhere so what tends to happen is that when drought hits there is very much a sense of its a crisis we have to do something quite often there are panic measures people ill prepared and quite often the most disadvantaged people in society and Wildlife Habitats and biodiversity theyre the first things to suffer so one of the things we would definitely like to see a lot more of is better Strategic Planning of drought risk and in particular as the climate is shifting as population is growing as more people are living thirsty lifestyles that better Contingency Planning is going to be absolutely critical that we see in nairobi is that something that youre seeing where you are a lack of Even National government planning all local government planning and people are going to go from being asked to preserve water or use it properly to being forced to use water property. I mean this is been a Long Time Coming its been lonely the making requests. For. Even all kinds of projections from population growth projections to line has changed in some of the employee. Portions of the major areas of the bludgeoning a city or even Climate Change positions and nothing has been done about it and will involve. Consistency you know every government city and National Government so unless its to use that and basically getting some of you know how we have solutions around supply but not Critical Thinking about my money spent on the weve seen is really i think vestments alone we want to flow out of regions that also have their own local want to see what it needs but also again the major ecological needs that what i mean some of in the legit landscape so we did things like into this in some spots and created enormous conservancy in the upland communities basically looking at downstream wealthy elephant of a Good Business basically consuming resource that they dont produce and yet look great wolfram place for a few cents so again very very similar whats up in South African situation is that very little forethought has been given just basically looking at Mission Level demands and how it was changed and how then you can basically get into trying to get supply and demand and also begin to think about the only and efficiency mechanisms just make better use of one of them we have rather than tell me that is that a crisis tailspin when its too late and youre pushing populations with things that it cant but it bearing in mind also that even though there is an acute and chronic one a shortage dinero almost seventy percent of it always population does not have access to what is a top of the pipe in their homes so youre biskit down about thirty percent of the population that is i didnt know mole grade reticulation so how about the informal seven people who are never had one on the regular basis for all the time. So you dont even know the depth of the water courses that were staring at because we just dont collect the data we go planning on Going Forward so i think it will because what is going to be the most virulent of this is they want to create. Enough alex erasing some incredibly strong issues that neal im assuming here youre nodding there when alex was talking about people not having access to clean water anyway thats an issue in the townships isnt it in south africa where it stand pipes is literally a pipe that comes up out of the ground but access to water is a human right is designated by the United Nations as being a human right and to pick up on alexs point about the wealthy middle class its almost like a virtue signalling thing now in south africa with the middle class in south africa they feel good about themselves if the obesity havent washed their hair today because that means the theyre saving water one phrase though that ive come across water all mentation infrastructure neal i dont understand what that means what is that. But its interesting listening to the conversation and going back a step about planning and one of the interesting things that weve seen here is that the plan was done they and the plans clearly showed that cape town would use could easily survive a fifty year drought which is currently the benchmark for design in south africa for water services. And there was a supplementary schemes to ship start to commence construction next year if what happened was that it wasnt a fifty year drought it was a five hundred year drought now what its doing is its causing the city to completely separate or come out its deeper conversation which weve been involved with as as an institution about to sort of the next step in south africa is a try country cape town something because logical island we have. C m two sides mountains in the east weve got a desert in the north and sir weve already used up our surface waters sources were city of a reform in growing at three percent per annum way next and i think the next is is quite interesting because essentially its about the fact that were going to have to get water from other sources the visions again weve paid for a long time weve paid for nineteen years were very good at it but you can only get selfish and does a lot of initial returns so where is that the new water going to come from and the bottom line its going to come from three places which are being clearly identified the first place is going to come from groundwater but of course you call just take out ground to willy nilly you have to make sure that your recharge rates are a distance good as the mountains checking out and the ways of doing that artificially as well as naturally that the second source of water is about a full treatment to a partial treatment to surge possible treatment for secondary uses such as factory floor was. Construction and like that the media budget will watch us at school for this for purpose water well alternatively treating it completely up to Potable Water the city of and took a new member has been successfully doing that for fifty years or third of the Water Supplies in fact treated sewage difference to potable and then the third source which is the one everybody thinks about first but actually turns out to be the most problematic and terms of cost environmental damage is the obvious want to see what are these other nation and what the city is talking about now is talking about the new normal which is where we could accept the fact that theres going to be shocks the system we dont know what Climate Change has in store for us but we just had a nasty fright so we must assume the worst so we need to make sure that i its often one bosket and we need to look at alternative sources of water so were looking at these three other alternative sources and the city is starting to roll out a program to tap. Into the aquifer treating sir geoffry and and some small scale desalination plants which will sort of help spread the risk ok lets stay with an idea of where next because water shortage is a global problem so polo went through a similar crisis to cape town three years ago at the time millions of brazilians had less than twenty days of water supply left the southern indian city of bangalore is losing over half of its Drinking Water over a lack of proper Waste Systems there china has also seven percent of the worlds fresh water and pollution is making it more difficult to have access to usable water nearly forty percent of beijings water cant even be used for agriculture or industrial purposes it is toxic in jakarta the illegal practice of digging wells has drained underground aquifers while mexico city imports much of its water from distant sources a quarter of its people have Running Water for just part of any one day and london gets up to eighty percent of its water from rivers but its pushing close to capacity and is likely to have supply problems by twenty twenty five David Ticknor in london may be apocryphal but if you drink tap water in london were always told its gone through seven other sets of kidneys before it gets into your mouth but thats maybe a slightly different distasteful conversation do you detect when you look in on an on this problem david do you detect blame shifting amongst different members of parliament different responsible ministers. I think youre touching on quite an important issue there. We can always talk about these water challenges as if there are technical issues and certainly to an extent they are and some of the solutions need to protect nickel as well whether thats building the reservoirs or recharging groundwater or managing demand through rolling out water meters for example the fundamentally a lot of the decisions which govern how we manage our water who gets water and who doesnt whether we over allocate our Water Systems or whether we live within our means a lot of those decisions off fundamentally political decisions and i think there is a real challenge now for World Leaders for political leaders for captains of industry as well for that matter this time where we need a grown up conversation about how societies how economies live within their hydrological means if you like there arent many parts of the world where i can really see that conversation happening at least not in terms of long term issues when we get acute situations like droughts then yes politicians suddenly talk about water can happen when there are floods by the way and you get it on the front page of newspapers but there really arent that many places where politicians are having that grown up conversation listening to experts listening to water users and thinking about those sometimes quite challenging tradeoffs in how we manage and use our water more sustainably alex that we see in nairobi is the situation already worse than we think it is because once the level in the dams gets below ten percent thats the point when they switch off the taps thats when they stop the supply going to houses Hospitals Hotels places where people need to drink water so youve actually got less water than you thought you had as you get so was that ten percent level. Yeah were exactly in that situation but i think what is also important is that we actually dont even know the real demand for so supply is one thing with all of these false claims that you think about is it heads or a hole in the existing want to supply. Context. Given the spot that seventy percent of the population is a lot of on the nation. A lot of things are happening and happening and hasnt done what i was doing its so i think were really at a very bad place in terms of partly because we just dont understand enormity of the problem and then partly we just dont have the plumbing in response capability to do basically deal with and as you say you know i had a point when the tops of time doff in the major installations meant facilities but a good part of it is that thats been made that this is a minority problem zali thirty percent of the population basically will will find life looking very different rest of the seventy percent this is their normal they dont have water taps they have to bear want to. Have a huge cause from informal brain doesnt i think that that its usually informal may chip off narrow is what a system is it is at the heart of the problem and then also makes it very difficult to really get a sense of what the real gravity of the problem is and therefore what the Optimal Solutions ought to be and the test positions that must be had by politicians but also by households and a good part of it is the inequality that it creates. And for and if it was sitting in there some of the uplift this is its a play want to hear understand that you just want to flush our toilets they get pretty pretty amazed by that level of. Of difference in lives to as it will be understood briefly neal because we are heading towards the last couple minutes of the program depending upon which mobile one reads day zero is april may or july assume the worst Case Scenario april what does the government in south africa have to do between now and that first hit a day zero. Well he just being a full on the taser has been viciously moved to to live with should be deep enough into or any system to save us but lets hypothetically say that days here comes about because of her no rain or whatever it is so at the moment the city is as organized two hundred collection points where so does and will be able to to collect wood in twenty five into containers how is that going to do to two business and Everything Else as is uncertain but like i said its beginning to look as good under control and the city has been working very hard together with the department of sanitation with their culture who its because as it was intimated early on its not just about the city its about the surrounding farmland western cape produces fifty percent of the exports and so its about managing as a whole ok and another to take not sort of one final point david techno in london david is the golden age of water availability coming to an end. In short yes i think it is in many parts of the world i think this combination of Climate Change is going to have a big impact on top of mismanagement of water so we need to governments to get serious about cutting Greenhouse Gas emissions to reduce risks of droughts as well as floods i think in terms of this golden age of water i think this idea that we can we can simply build our way out of water shortages is probably no longer true in most instances we need to put in place portfolios of solutions which in some places might include some more water storage so thatll help in times of droughts but it also relies much more on managing demands on looking after our land and our weapons which acts as natural sponges in the landscape and help us be more resilient and i think as well weve got to realise that if we continue polluting and over obstructing our rivers and aquifers when drought does hit that leaves us no where to go so weve got to just days a day take better care of those rivers lakes aquifers reservoirs on which we all depend gentleman the clock has beaten us as ever i could carry on talking but unfortunately we cant thank you so much for your Company Thanks to our guests Neil Armitage david technique and alex that we thank you to you two for your company and see the show again anytime on the website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion to check Facebook Page facebook dot com for slash a. J. Inside story can also join the conversation on twitter at a. J. Inside story for me b. T. W. And everyone on the team thanks for watching well do it at same time tomorrow susan. The scene for us where on line what is american sign in yemen that peace is always possible but it never happens not because the situation is complicated but because no one cares or if you join us on set there are people that little choosing between buying medication and eating base is a dialogue i want to get in one more comment because this is someone whos not to just posted a story join the global conversation at this time on aljazeera. Five countries. Four days. Three thousand kilometer ends. Two generations. One. Syrian refugees on a surreal journey to see me. On the bright side. A witness documentary at this time on how does either. In the heart of the amazon the libyan family has put landmines in peril to harvest brazil nuts. But its getting the congo to the capital is an even more dangerous challenge. Risking it tool to believe yeah. At this time on al jazeera. This is aljazeera. Hello im Barbara Sarah this is the news hour live from london thank you for joining scumming up in the next the sixty minutes. They